Your kids decide when you buy a home

Report: today’s parents make major purchasing decisions around the kids

You may think you’re the one calling the shots about where and when you move next. You’re wrong.

As it turns out, it’s likely your kids are the ones pulling the strings.

That’s according to survey results from Coldwell Banker Real Estate, released on Tuesday, which found that 79% of Millennial parents (between the ages of 18 and 34) and 70% of Generation X parents (between the ages of 35 and 49) make major purchasing decisions around their children. Moreover, 67% of Millennial parents and 64% of Gen X parents said they were more concerned about the immediate impact of a move on the emotional well-being of their children than whether moving was a good decision in the long run, according to the survey of 2,000 U.S. parents.

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It’s a bit of a shift in attitudes from the boomer generation. Fifty-two percent of boomer parents (between the ages of 50 and 69) said they made major purchasing decisions based on their kids, and 54% said they were more concerned about the short-term emotional impact moving would have on their kids than the long-term effect of the move for the entire family.

“Thirty years ago, if a parent had a job opportunity that was positive and was in sync with their job goals, there was a move that was happening, and the kids needed to adjust,” said Robi Ludwig, psychotherapist and lifestyle correspondent for Coldwell Banker Real Estate.

But today’s parents may be much less willing to rock the boat, if children are thriving in their current environment, Ludwig said. “We hear stories about bullying in school, and kids being vulnerable,” prompting parents to stay put, not venturing into the unknown, she said.

To be fair, the numbers don’t indicate that huge of a shift, said Eileen Kennedy-Moore, a Princeton, N.J. psychologist and co-author of Smart Parenting for Smart Kids. “What it’s saying is that a slightly greater number of younger generation parents think about the impact on kids than the older generation,” she said. And even that might not even be fair to surmise, since the parents who currently have young children will tend to be more cognizant of their feelings than those who are recalling how they felt about their child’s emotional wellbeing years ago, she added.

And just because parents consider what is best for their children does not mean kids are the “chief purchasing officers” of the family, as the Coldwell Banker report suggested, Kennedy-Moore said.

While attention to a child’s emotional needs is important, Ludwig and others say parents should have the confidence to make an unpopular decision if it’s better in the long run for the whole family. Plus, there are life lessons to be learned from adjusting to a new set of circumstances.

“We nurture resilience in our children,” said Leslie Connor, a psychologist in Wilmington, Del. “We want to meet their needs and not stress them unnecessarily…but life is so much bigger than their needs.” Instead, parents should be there to help children adjust, she said.

“There is so much to be gained from adapting,” Connor said.

“If we overly make the focus on the children, where we make nothing difficult, it could be paralyzing for them because it’s not the real world,” Ludwig said. “In the real world, not everyone gets a trophy.”

Age matters

Of course, some moves are made specifically with children in mind, such as moves made into a good school district, said James Sharpe, a Seattle-based real-estate agent with Redfin. About 75% of the families he has worked with put school districts first when looking for a home. In fact, a recent Redfin analysis found that people pay $50 more per square foot, on average, for homes in the best school districts, compared with those located in average-ranked districts.

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